“Todd Remeika?” The therapist called, poking her head out the door just enough to see into the waiting room.

“Uh, yeah, that’s…me,” I nodded, not moving from my chair. I could hear the muscles in the necks of every other patient creaking as they turned to look at me. Oh, right, yeah, I was supposed to get up. I stood up from the chair, straight as a shot and dropped my phone on the floor. Picking it up, I jetted across the floor and nearly slammed into the therapist who was now holding the door open just enough for me to get through.

“Hi Todd,” She said, walking down a long hallway toward her office. I followed her nervously, playing tossing my phone from hand to hand. “My name is Mary Roudebush, It’s great to meet you, why don’t we have a seat in here?”

“Uh, yeah,” I blurted out, passing through a door and emerging into an office of sorts, one with a desk and a few chairs. I stood in the middle of the room like an idiot, waiting for her to tell me what to do.

“Oh! You can sit down,” She said with a smile. “Just pick whichever chair you’re comfortable with.”

She was older than me, probably mid-thirties with long but thinning blonde hair and a pair of black rimmed glasses. She was dressed casually, but everything about her screamed ‘professional’ and I couldn’t help but feel a little bit intimidated. I plopped down in the chair nearest the wall and folded my hands, my foot involuntarily tapping the floor.

“You seem a little nervous,” She said to me, sitting across in the other chair. She was the therapist that Kari and Sakiya had recommended, but she didn’t know a thing about me honestly. I didn’t know how I was going to blurt this out. “What brings you in today?”

“Um…I guess I…I just wanted to talk about…my life,” I said, biting my lower lip and looking around at the four walls surrounding us. Jesus why was I so nervous?

“Well,” She told me. “I want you to know that everything you tell me in here is in confidence, so please, feel free to tell me what’s on your mind, or we could just talk, it’s really up to you.”

“So we can talk about anything, and no one will ever know?” I looked at her nervously, I didn’t quite believe it.

“That’s what therapy is,” She smiled. “So why don’t we start simply. Tell me about yourself.”

“Well um…” I stuttered a little bit, I wasn’t sure where I should be going with this. “My name is…Todd and…I…well I go to college at Woodcrest University. I’m studying to be…well my major is English, I’m not sure where I’m going with that, I’m transgender, I really like video games, I play Dark Pantheon with my best friend, we’re roommates, we share a dorm. Oh, my girlfriend recently broke up with me…there really isn’t much to me.”

“I see,” She nodded. “Well you said a lot there, but I feel like there’s only one topic you really want to talk about today.”

“Yeah,” I sighed. “I…I mean it’s really hard for me to say it out loud but…I’ve…I’ve always felt like a girl and lately things have gotten…difficult.”

“Difficult, how?”

“I guess…I mean…I was able to just…ignore it before. I could…just be a guy and everything was fine. I wanted to be a girl but…it didn’t consume my life.”

“And now?”

“It’s just…it hurts. I need to be Audrey, that’s…my name. My real name I mean. I need to be her all the time and I can’t…I can’t figure out how.”

“Okay,” She said, typing a few things into a laptop sitting on her desk. “I think we’re missing part of the story here. You said you were fine being a guy for a while, but suddenly things changed. I think we need to figure out what changed. Did something happen in your life?”

“I…kinda?” I didn’t know if I should tell her this, but this was all confidential, right? “This is…going to sound really bad, like really really bad but…I…broke into the GAT house and…sort of stole a dress.”

“You broke INTO the GAT house? As in Gamma Alpha Tau?” Mary regarded me with a look of panic, as if someone had walked over her grave. “Oh my god, Audrey, they…um, you know last year, a guy broke in and their president just attacked him with a melon baller; he underwent plastic surgery in the hospital.”

“I guess…they liked me?” I shrugged. “I mean they were going to ruin my life, they had pictures of me in the dress and…they were going to send it to all of my contacts but…I guess they found…my trans stuff, like the forum I visit, and stuff, on my phone and…”

“You’re telling me Gamma Alpha Tau let you off because of that?” She raised an eyebrow. “Are you being completely honest with me right now?”

“I…yeah and…they’ve helped me a lot…I haven’t really been able to go outside as myself…except for once but…I think they’re helping me be more…confident.”

I couldn’t believe I was saying all of this, the things I was telling her? Basically my most well-guarded secrets for my entire life, but here I was, spilling it all.

“How long have you known that you were transgender?” She turned back to her laptop to type in some notes, glancing up at me periodically.

“I guess since I was about six, I was sitting with my mom in our car before school, I was in kindergarten and I remember asking her, ‘Mom, am I a boy or a girl?’ and she said: ‘You’re my beautiful little boy’. I mean, it’s obvious she wants to be the mother to a…boy…and…I mean, if I come out to her, then I’ve killed that, I’ve taken it from her. I keep thinking that it might be better to just…keep it all in. I can live with the pain, I can push through it but my mom, and my dad, they already raised a girl, they don’t need another one, you know?”

“I think that maybe you shouldn’t be thinking about what they need,” Mary suggested. “Maybe you should be thinking about what you need and what would be best for you in the future. The question is, what do YOU want to do?”

“I want to transition,” I admitted. “Every time I see a girl in public I wish I could BE her. It hurts, it hurts that I really can’t. I feel like…like I’ll never look like that, like I’ll always look like this. I want to come out to everyone but my parents and…my best friend, Mason, I don’t want to lose them. I just…feel like I’m not going to make it if I don’t…if I don’t transition, if I don’t be who I really am.”

“Alright,” Mary nodded. “So you’re saying you want to start hormone replacement therapy?”

“I guess…yes…” I nodded. “How do I do that? How do I get started?”

“Well here’s the thing,” Mary said. “To be approved for hormones you need a letter from your therapist, that would be me, but before I write that letter I’m going to need a few things from you. First of all, you’re not presenting female, at all. I need to know that you want this, so I’m going to ask that you present as a woman in public for at least twelve months, and then we can revisit the letter. In the meantime, I want you to come see me twice a month, it’s entirely possible that you’ll change your mind within the next year and I don’t want you to make any decisions that you’ll regret.”

“But wait,” I frowned. “I already know I’m trans, I already KNOW this is what I want to do, why do we have to wait? Why can’t I just get the letter now?”

“This is a very serious, very life changing decision,” She pointed out to me. “You need to be sure you’re ready, and I need to be sure you’re ready. We’ll work our way up to it.”

“Alright,” I hung my head, defeated. “I guess we should make our next appointment then.”

This had gone far worse than I’d expected, and parent’s day was coming up. I couldn’t present as myself until after they’d left. What kind of a mess was I in? I left Mary’s office feeling like I’d made zero progress in an uphill battle and it was only going to get worse.